


liminality (in endless motion)

by stellarisms



Series: it goes like this (the minor fall, the major lift)。 [5]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Companion Piece
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-15 21:39:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 15,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1320115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarisms/pseuds/stellarisms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi knew damn well up there wasn’t any better than down here, heard of what inhuman beings laid beyond the relative safety of the Walls.  But he wanted to see the sky, wanted to see it from a far closer distance than this.  </p><p>Wanted to fly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. dreaming (in the land of twilight)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a familiar tale begins from a different locale, a different vantage point, but is a story - to the young boy without wings to whom it belongs to - that's worth more than its weight in its retelling.

The sky holds no answers.

From the time Levi was old enough to walk, old enough to talk, he had heard as much from his Brothers.

It became his motto.

An enduring life philosophy.

He could not fly, even if they joked that their Underground Crow always looked as if he could.

But he looked toward the sky, anyway, as a constant source of reassurance.

When he was tired, when he was bored, he’d look up.

The sky had its changes as much as anyone accustomed to life in Sina’s slums but, from the visible skyline past the craggy rooftop partitions, everything about the world above looked at peace.

Unlike here.

But every weather fluctuation gave way to brighter panoramas (to light-swathed summer sunsets, to blistering cool autumn afternoons, to unendurable winter’s eves – that emerged with the springtime, every time, as did the sun’s eventual ascent.

But every sunrise gave way to eventual nightfall (to the constancy of another day’s cycle, another vainly grasped hope for something better) that resonated with them all, beneath the chaotic devastation that exacted its ferocious gales through this harrowed cityscape.

But every cityscape-sent wishes wrapped in starlight (to be granted a chance, an opportunity, a role other than the one given to him not from birth but from the moment Esther and Donovan found him as an infant abandoned in that grimy back alley left for death and gave him a new name and identity) made him want to tear aside these trappings that held him down more and more so he could take flight for the Surface someday.

Someday, Levi thinks, he’d like to be reborn like that.

 

* * *

 

Levi knew damn well up there wasn’t any better than down here, heard of what inhuman beings laid beyond the relative safety of the Walls.

But he wanted to see the _sky_ , wanted to see it from a far closer distance than this.

Wanted the stars and the sun and the moon – an untouchable realm, a fortress amidst the clouds impenetrable, a sanctuary of fragmented white and blue hues – that much closer.

Wanted to fly.

 

* * *

 

 

(Even if it was as impossible an ideal as wanting to break free from the Family who raised him – unless he stole back his building debt with interest himself.)


	2. come a little bit closer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our little Nightingale meets a Petal who - once upon a yesteryear - was as much a flower in full bloom as the young love that guided them to the Underground.

 

Code words in the Underground are everywhere, a vocabulary built into dialect that Levi learns of from the time he's old enough to speak to the Helmets who tower over him.

Helmets: the bouncers who keep the Forest clean of corpses and Tricks.

Tricks: moles who'd sell them out for a Sina spy's pretty sum.

The Forest: the alleyways that his Brothers patrolled for their commonlaw Father who fed, housed, and bid them to roam the streets.

And he as well.

Levi first learns of Petals the same way he learns to carry his first pocketknife, the same way he learns how to chase the wind through filthy foregrounds and paltry passages, when he is seven years old.

“Our little Crow,” the nine other Brothers who took him under their wing sniggered and shoved at him playfully, “hasn’t seen a Petal before?”

Levi hadn't, of course.

Petals were among the highest-paid courtesans of the pleasure houses in the farthest Underground depths. He hasn't even so much thought about the youngest of teenaged streetwalkers and canal-bound prostitutes, let alone sought out their services.

He’s never had such want, but they have business with one, or so they claimed.

Levi, who was tired of reading the books he procured from the treasure heap that was the Junkyard where he normally worked helping out Isabel and Farlan on weekends when Father didn't send him out to patrol or deliver messages, decided to follow them.

And so, without their knowledge, he did just that.

 

* * *

 

Whatever the fuss was about these Petals, whatever business his Brothers had with them, Levi would only learn of it years later.

He would only learn of why they were called Petals even later in life.

Witnessing for himself what unfurls once a Petal withers, after all, taught him a far greater lesson than what he learned from the one he took to calling a friend.

 

* * *

 

Everything about Cadenza felt stifling.

The scent of sex everywhere one went.

The smoke in the sultry atmosphere.

The sounds, which were strange to seven-year-old Levi (but not startling, no, not when he had once or twice before stumbled across entwined forms and fornicating bodies in the backstreets or through half-open windows while he hid and kept watch while his Brothers attended to their ‘business’ inside and tried, to no avail, to understand what was so pleasurable about the base act) though a boy that age would have no inkling as to why.

It was strange.

All very, very strange.

All of it strange and stifling and so very uncomfortably warm.

So Levi slipped past the receptionist chattering away with one of their frequent clients complaining about the rising price for a night’s services, seeking shelter in the more temperate halls of the establishment.

It was cooler there, at least.

But the rooms were either locked or left wide open and, as he wasn’t planning on waiting around for a Petal to return and find him sneaking around there, Levi decided to wander to the performance room instead.

Or, rather, the backstage dressing area of the performance room.

Empty as the powder room was, the claps and cheers and whistles for the showgirls’ return to the stage floated past the curtains. Levi knew it would be best to hide somewhere while he waited, vigilant, for his Brothers to finish their job after the performance was over.

But where? Until when?

“My, my, what _do_ we have here?” Just as he decides on ducking underneath the side vanity table, near inaudible footsteps approach from behind. “A lost little Nightingale?”

“Sorry—” Levi spins around, about to apologize and make a run for it (and perhaps use the pocketknife kept sheathed in his ankle-high boot) until he sees the courtesan’s face. “S…ir…?”

“Nope,” the long-haired individual smiles, one palm pressed to red-lined lips as gold eyes dance with mirth and they begin to unravel the top half of their robes to reveal: “Not ‘sir,’ little one.”

“Oh!” Levi’s mouth goes dry. “I’m sorry, Ma’am.”

His throat constricts, then, though not at the other’s bared breasts.

It’s when the Petal (he’s sure of it now, at least, because the pale tattoo which brands them as Cadenza’s property is an impossible thing to miss) exposes their profession’s mark, when they smile as they let their robes fall away completely, no modesty to be found as they stride over to the cupboard-closet past a shell-shocked Levi.

“Not ma’am, either,” they laugh – and Levi finds it strange, strange, strange, cheeks burning as he recalls the sight of what hangs between the Petal’s legs that’s _just like mine_ except bigger and longer and shaped smooth around the dark-colored tip. “But thank you, little Nightingale, for vouching for my androgyny.”

If he hadn’t been such an avid reader at such a young age, Levi would have gotten caught up by words alone.

“Hm, I guess it should be alright.” The Petal goes on talking to themselves, conversational as they choose their evening outfit, until they turn to an awestruck Levi. “You look as lost as I did back when I first got thrown into this place, so I suppose I can make an exception for you.”

“You came in following that cute boy wearing a cap at the corner table, didn’t you?”

Levi makes a soft sound of startled surprise, _Calvin_ , offering a guilty nod.

“I thought so.” And again, all at once, the Petal’s serious visage reverts to a soft smile, one that Levi can’t help but find strange and pretty and all at once **familiar**. “My name’s Cera. Since we’ll both be here ’till the ladies giving their best out there come back, care to tell me yours?”

From a young age, Levi was taught never to share his true name to ‘outsiders.’

But Cera appears as much out of place here as he does, eloquent as most courtesans are naught to be yet also uncharacteristically open, the closest thing to honest that Levi’s ever witnesses in a person outside his small circle of Brothers and Sisters and the brief authoritarian praise from Ester or Donovan as his commonlaw parents, and Levi feels very strange.

Very, very strange.

At seven years old, experienced too much from his experience yet never once encountering a moment where he hasn’t had to question or doubt someone’s kindness – let alone someone’s gender – Levi wonders if perhaps he’s a bit strange, too.

“Levi.” He takes Cera’s hand when they hold out theirs to him, shyly, and he doesn’t even notice his mouth’s begun to shape into a smile as well until Cera’s grin widens. “It’s Levi. I’ll, umm, go by Levi or ‘boy’ or whatever the hell you wanna call me, but—”

Cera laughs, patting the crown of his head and tousling his thick dark hair.

Levi’s chest feels as warm and comfortable as the air outside in the dressing hall and the corridors and the lobby area of Cadenza.

“Well, if you or your friends ever have business here some other day and you want to stay somewhere until they leave,” Cera tells him, “you can come and find me here, little Levi.”

It’s the first time that Levi’s ever met someone from outside the Underground – and his first friend from the Surface.

They were the first friend, the _only_ friend, he’s ever told his true name.

 


	3. forgotten phrases (tender and sweet)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Petal speaks words of praise for their Golden Boy and Levi the little Nightingale takes to the tales about as well as one would hope.

Cera never did seem to belong in a place like Cadenza.

They never sold him out, swore on their life and livelihood that they wouldn’t, and they never made him leave the dressing room area or forced him back to the front lobby where there was nothing to be done for a seven-going-on-eight year old boy.

Cera never seemed anything less than kind, to clients and fellow Petals alike, from the newest apprentices to those veteran courtesans who rivaled Cera’s years of experience.

As it turned out, Cera had been a Petal almost all their life.

For a brief time, they were able to travel and offer services to Upper Sina citizens – back when the finances flowed freer and the establishment was under more benevolent management – and that was, apparently, how Cera met their ‘Golden Boy.’

Levi heard many, many stories about their Golden Boy.

But while Levi never asked many questions unless he was approached first and had been taught since he was a child not to let 'outsiders' know what his name was, he couldn't help but share stories of his own with Cera each and every time he and his Brothers went for their visits to Cadenza for the next few years to come.

_I’ll tell you secrets of my own in return, little Nightingale, if you’re curious._

Cera would always listen, too, welcoming his stories while leaning down and restyling their hair during intermission while the other courtesans (now accustomed to this once-unusual visiting boy who snuffed their attempts at playful honeyed words of affection and flippant flirtations and, eventually, earned their respect for noticing their habits sooner than most of their clients ever had), brushing glittering mahogany strands back into thick and thin braids spilling past their shoulders and staining the rim of their eyes with kohl as they responded and offered advice and smiled, fonder than anyone had ever smiled at Levi all his life.

Cera would never deny him any answers or secrets, and so Levi found it harder still to deny them any answers or secrets of his own.

"So what's so special about him, your precious Golden Boy?" Levi squinted and squirmed while Cera tried to put makeup on him after the show – just to try it out. Levi had just turned ten at the time, having acquainted himself at Cadenza long enough to ask Cera things. "Was he loaded or what?"

"I don't mean gold as in rich," Cera laughed, adding a soft gray hue to the corners of Levi's widened lids. "I mean **he** was golden. Pure."

"Must've been," snorted Levi, not out of spite but because Cera powdered his nose a little too hard and he coughed before adding, "if you liked him that much."

When the fading puffs of talcum dissolve into thin air and Levi stops blinking, he sees the strangest look on the Petal's face.

"He was the only thing I ever dared to hope for," said Cera, staring toward the drawn curtains and the hall leading back to the stage, "and the only one I would have tried to steal away my debt for."

That, Levi knew even at ten years old, was a codeword which meant far more to those in the Underground.

Stealing back one's debt meant to recompense. The payoff, complete. You were free to go after that.

Those were easy to pay off.

But stealing away one's debt meant _killing_ your debtor, putting a knife in the back of the one you owed money to and fleeing.

"Would you do it now, if you knew you had a chance to run away?" It was easy to talk about in theory, this payback of a different kind, but Cera had talked about this before, too. "If you knew he would take you in, would you kill to fly away from here?"

(Cera was never without a smile on their face.

But this smile, as Levi would be haunted to remember for years to come after they fell to temptation, was full of longing.

It was strange. Out of place. And for some reason or another, it made Levi terribly sad.)

"If you ever met my Golden Boy, little Nightingale," Cera told him, no laugh warmer or kinder than the laugh when they spoke of Erwin Smith, "you would already know the answer to that."


	4. you are lost (in a nightmare)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Nightingale, bathed in the shadow of doubt, learns of the thin boundaries between Life and Death.

Levi crosses paths with Death several times while living in the Underground.

When he was a child, back when all he did to earn his keep among the Family’s ranks was pass along letters of affiliation and recruitment and loan reminders, his Brothers protected him. Sheltered him.

Ensured that wherever he went, whatever he was doing, he was never alone.

 

* * *

 

Once, shortly after he learned how to hold his own in street brawls and impromptu skirmishes, Levi makes a grave mistake.

At the time, his mistake was a redeemable one.

Walking alone in back alleys didn’t always mean you were at risk of a Spider catching you, after all. He was smarter than most boys his age, well-aware of the warning signs of a waiting web.

Few could ensnare him – not with his wit or his verve, tokens and talismans earned and refined over training with Roger and lessons on self-defense with Connor, Cory, and Calvin.

Fewer still could pin him down without ending up running in the other direction a bite mark and several stab wounds later.

But sandstone-sculpted and wood-handled weapons could only get a ten year old boy so far.

The rough hands grappling for his collar, the chase that followed him breaking away in a steadfast sprint, the grime and the soot and the tear-streaks running down his cheeks and his nose when they finally caught up and all but smothered him under the weight of all five of them hovering over him – and he might have surely been whisked away to be appraised by the head of a local pleasure-house if Viktor hadn’t been on his way to evening patrol by the docks and took a steel bat to the enlisters’ skulls.

If he were stronger, if he hadn’t been caught off guard, if he were **bigger** , he could have done it himself.

_I would’ve killed them, Viktor, all of them._

_On the spot? Without any of us backing you up?_

If Viktor sees his hands shake as he sheaths the dagger back in its encasement again, he never says anything about it.

(Nor does Viktor say anything to Levi’s answer of _I can take care of myself_.)

 

* * *

 

The next time, Levi almost does.

When his Brothers tell the story to Esther later that night, they’ll recall it much differently than Levi from his place on the warehouse rooftop as he kept watch.

His Brothers recall the gunshots from behind the warehouse.

The ambush, their surroundings obscured by at least twenty Helmets from the latest loan shark turncoats.

The Tricks, emerging from the dockside depository, one by one, commonplace pistols and Military Police rifles brandished.

Levi remembers.

But he remembers the look of white-streaked panic on Roger’s face when one of the thugs puts him in a chokehold clearest of all.

He remembers, too, the lurch of momentum kicking in, the weighted balance to his faltering steps toward the granite’s edge.

He remembers the moment before soles touch open air and he flies down toward the struggling forms below.

He remembers the frightful rush of wind coiling around his small form.

The strange heaviness of that iron bar aimed.

The air’s resistance when he sunk that weapon down, with near-perfect accuracy, onto the back of that Trick’s head, the sound of metal smashing skin crushing bone, and the instantaneous impact of—

 

* * *

 

Roger, through Wesley’s profuse _thank you_ s and Joseph’s hysterical _thank the fuckin’ Underground Gates you’re alive_ , grants him an incredulous _congratulations_.

Connor presses to his side and, just as close in age as their brethren by blood, Calvin and Cory shush his hiccoughing sobs.

Ali rips the stained shirt from Levi and Viktor shields his red-dyed side from view with his big coat, shields him from view because, dark as it was, the Tricks who fled as soon as they saw their boss taken down by a boy who barely came up to his stomach would remember the ten-year-old’s face.

Hugh, the oldest at seventeen, refocuses them all with a quavering command:

_Let’s just get home and report what happened to Father._

 

* * *

 

The only sound on their trek back through the Forest is the ragged inhales and exhales from all ten Brothers.

The only time they stop walking is right outside the Donovan’s apartment complex.

The only reason they stop is for Levi when he flees to a corner, knees hitting the ground just barely in time before he’s so sick to his stomach he’s **convulsing** by the time Joseph and Hugh run over to him, Ali wiping his mouth and chin and picking him up.

All ten of them take shelter with Viktor checking back to ensure no one follows them inside.

The winter’s first snow drifts in.

As does all else – silently.


	5. you've gone much farther (too far)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Nightingale learns - as all good things are naught to do - that the ephemeral Petal must unfurl and wither to the flow of the seasons' passage.

The third time, the last time, Levi is neither the savior nor the one saved.

 

* * *

 

It’s the first weekend visit he’s made to Cadenza to visit Cera in a long while, so he lingers long after his Brothers leave.

They hardly question him now, inclined to give him more independence after Father’s gave him his license to kill. Twelve was the customary age for most living under the mafia’s protection, given that boys and girls that age could enlist as army trainees at that age.

Levi is the youngest to have ever been given that honor.

He feels no sense of pride, to have earned the privilege of _keeping the streets as clean as you wish_ and the mark of adulthood.

But he lowers his gaze, hides his clenched fists behind his back, whispers _thank you, Father_ as he departs.

He has no desire to head back just yet now, either, to the place he’s made into a home.

He knows his Brothers won’t wait up for him.

In the neighboring suites that take up the entire top floor of the apartment complex, they sleep soundly, weary from their own patrols and daily business and wanton nights, not worried for their youngest anymore.

Not when Levi’s strengths have been honed through the course of common experience and constant run-ins where he’s proven he can hold his own.

Not when, after the night of his first kill, Levi’s chosen name began to spread (the Underground Crow, they called him, able to bound and fly overhead before swooping down on his prey) to the point where most are too intimidated to approach him – and the ones who do never get very far in their attempt at besting the agile boy in street brawls.

Not when, three years past, Levi is thirteen years old and as strong as any who’ve survived this long in the Underground.

“But you aren’t happy,” Cera’s satin sleeves weaved about the bangles on their wrist clank together as they brush back Levi’s hair with perfume-dipped hands, “they trust you to take care of yourself?”

“I don’t want their trust.” He’s more honest, here, but Levi’s never been able to explain why he feels more comfortable sharing these thoughts with someone outside the Family. “I don’t want anything from them. They’ve done enough for me as it is, picking me off the streets back when I was a brat who wasn’t even potty-trained yet.”

“It’s not a crime,” Cera tells him, done combing his hair, while making way for the makeup palettes and colored dyes, “to want things, my little nightingale.”

“It’s not—” Something about the way that Cera says it sparks defiance in Levi. “—but take your own advice before you start lecturing me.”

Something about the way Cera smiles, tonight, makes Levi’s anger dissolve instantly.

“You know,” Cera reminisces, “you really do remind me of him. My darling Golden Boy used to say things like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like ‘it’s okay to be selfish’ and ‘you’re allowed to want things.’ That it’s okay to ‘live for yourself.’”

“You mean you don’t?” The wry twist of their lips, the chortle that it earns Levi as they steady his palm back down on the vanity table to paint his nails, is almost enough to clear the hazy air backstage. “Isn’t that why you’re still trying to earn your keep around this shitty joint?”

“Language, little fae child of mine.” Levi’s mild disgruntlement from the nickname returns when Cera tweaks the bridge of his nose in reproach. “And don’t be silly. You know why I do my best to ‘earn my keep’ around here.”

“Do I.” It’s hardly a question, because Levi does.

“I know you do.” But he also loves to hear them talk, learns something new about Cera each and every time he comes here, and it passes the time nicely while they busy themselves between intermissions dolling Levi up and sometimes trying to convince him to come out on stage with them the next time they have a show for the more inebriated patrons of their establishment. “The newly blossomed Petals need someone to keep them from getting trampled on, for one thing. That’s why I’ve been saving, Levi. So I can buy this place from the loan sharks and the Master and set all of the other girls free.”

It’s a lofty dream, a plan that Levi’s heard the finer details of for as long as he’s known Cera.

But he’s sure that if there’s anyone who can pull off a plan like that, it’s Cera.

“That’s your sole purpose in life then,” returns Levi, no ill intent to his deadpan quip, “to protect all the little guys who can’t take care of themselves?”

Cera’s laugh is light and indulgent.

But their eyes are strange that night, so heavy-lidded and dark-rimmed and _tired_ , and Levi can’t help but wonder how he never noticed before.

Just as he doesn’t notice the music ending, the applause and whistles rising to an almost excruciating volume.

“Someone needs to protect them,” says Cera, “when no one else will.”

Just as he never notices the flash of a silver barrel from the dressing area curtain behind him.

“What about,” asks Levi, a strange swelling distress felt in the strangely taut silence that echoes, “someone to protect you?”

Cera suddenly spins him around, wraps both their arms around him, clutches the boy tighter than tightly to their chest.

As if he were a child.

“Cera?” But Levi’s questions are never answered with words; instead, transparent rainfall trickles down in scattered droplets, down his forehead, over his wide-eyed vision. “Cera, are you—?”

The question never reaches them.

“If you ever meet my Golden Boy,” Cera whispers, near inaudible, “make sure to thank him for protecting me all these years—”

Their hands sweep gentle across his cheeks as they move to cover his ears and his eyes, the fragrant flowers imbued on the Petal’s skin sweetly short of perennial.

“—and apologize for having lied to protect him.”

 

* * *

 

He never hears the quiet footsteps or the distinctive _click_ of a gun before the pleasure house’s Master pulls the trigger, never registers how many seconds it takes for the loan sharks to leap from the rafters of that backstage dressing area to tackle and seize the Cadenza men whose time to pay back their debt had run out.

But Levi will always remember the unmistakable shudder of Lucera falling against him as the Petal fluttered and let their color spread and seep into his clothes with their final wish, their final breath: _live for yourself and only yourself from now until always, my little nightingale._

And it was that promise, that desire to live on the way Cera had always wished they could, which compelled him to the brave challenge of slipping away in the confusion and running from Cadenza all the way from the red-light district to the larger networked backstreets of the Forest all the way home.

 

* * *

 

But by the time he returns to the apartment, his Brothers are already gone.

The people gathered around the disaster site weren’t, however.  

Whatever snippets Levi could hear of scattered conversations , he took with a grain of salt at first.

After all, fights were nothing so unusual in the world they lived in.

Escalating fights, too, that caused damage and riots and attracted the attention of onlooker passerby with nothing better to do other than laugh and point at other peoples’ misfortune.

It was what kept people in the Underground going, Levi knew, but when he saw they weren’t gathered around the elevator but their line of apartment suites, the sick premonition in his stomach took a turn for the worst.

“Those loan sharks came and went and made such a mess,” one of the more vocal tenants – one of many mafia men and women and children, born into the Don’s cause years upon years ago – mumbles.  

“Who’s gonna clean up that awful mess is the real question.” Their live-in domestic partner scoffs. “Place your bets now – Esther or the Don?”

“I couldn’t even tell they were loan sharks,” yet another tenant outright cackles. “The way they all stomped out there talking about taking it to the streets, you’d think they were part-elephant.”

“S’far as I see it,” yet another tenant brays, more vocal than the rest, not noticing Levi standing right behind him, “I say good riddance. Cocky bastards think they run the Underground just ’cause the Don gave ’em Brother titles.”

“You said it,” the vocal tenant follows up, sneering. “The hierarchy could use a bit of a rearranging, anyway, if you know what I mean—”

No one ever catches the swift ankle-kicker who puts that former junkie flat on his ass in seconds.

Nor does Levi stick around to hear the rest.


	6. no one but me in this cold place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An interlude, in memorial.

At the docks, the same docks where Levi had visited countless times with his Brothers and alone and made his first kill, he finds Calvin and Cory and Connor where the manmade waterfront overlooked the bridges leading out of the Underground into the Lower Sina districts.

They aren’t moving.

They aren’t **moving**.

There’s a strange fog here, ever present as always, and the poor visibility reached its peak condition in the last year or so. Levi can’t be sure, but he’s almost sure the fog isn’t from the fluctuating conditions happening above ground.  

It’s pollution.

Based on the smell of it, he thinks it’s from the working-class’s factories attempting to reestablish industries from the Old World again.

But for the moment, stories from centuries of yore are the last thing on his mind because the closer Levi gets, the closer into view the triplets’ prone forms grow closer to his obstructed field of vision.

They’re on the ground, he thinks, they’re on the _ground_ , not moving and not breathing when he leans down to check, and he’s never been scared of something like Death, never been afraid of the prospect, and he knows damn well people can be broken and shattered and crushed like playthings by human hands.

And yet—

 _And yet_ —

 

* * *

 

And yet, as his steps waver as the sight of all nine of his brothers lying lifeless across the dockyards, Levi understands then why an emotion like fear exists.

And yet, as his steps pace around the disfigured heaps of his Brothers laid out display to send a clear message of retribution for the one who dared to crush their gang leader’s skull that fateful night three years ago, Levi feels everything but fear.

And yet, as he carries and pushes and checks one last time, _one last time_ , to see if any of them are breathing, Levi takes Hugh’s lighter and builds the pyre around their mangled corpses back behind that warehouse and swears –as he had sworn to do for his Brothers when he was younger and still believed in a thing like justice – that he won’t ever leave another ‘job’ like this unfinished.

 

* * *

 

Never again, Levi thinks, and sets the flame on the meticulously stacked beams and brushwood to burn the boy he was once was.

 


	7. i will take all the blame (this time)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Nightingale resolves - through a much-needed exchange of dialogue with his Father - that where he needs to go, his past will not be allowed to join him.

 

So now keeping watch on these dirty-ass streets is my responsibility?

_You always had a certain talent for watching the Forest from above._

(What if I can’t go it alone?)

Will I be working alone?

_No. Farlan and Isabel will accompany you. They’re good Children, if not inexperienced at Running, but they will inevitably learn._

And what if I can’t teach them?

_You will. As it is, there’s no one they trust more.   What’s more, as Esther’s told me, Isabel already calls you—_

She’s called me ‘Big Bro’ from the day Farlan and I found her in the Junkyard about to get jumped.

_That’s precisely what I mean. You can inspire awe among our ranks, and so they will follow after, naturally._

In other words, they trust me.

_They aren’t the only one. There’s not a single Child I’d trust more with this task._

(Not a single Child alive, you mean.)

In the event I go, too, then—

_All that you need to focus on is survival…our expectations are sky-high for you._

_Take care not to prove us wrong and Run for us._

_For the Family’s sake._

(For their sake.)

When I’ve come of age, will there be someone to take my place?

_There will always be others. Do you mean you wish to disenfranchise yourself after you’ve come of age?_

(I want to fly away from here.)

Doesn’t the Family have some shitty rule or regulation on that?

(I want to leave the Underground, see the world above the Surface.)

_The Family permits disenfranchisement once you’ve come of legal age, if you so choose. If that’s what you truly want, however—_

(Once I have wings, I’ll fly away.)

‘Defecting and leaving the Family is a crime punishable by death’…is that how it goes? We both know I’m not suicidal enough to stick around the Underground after leaving.

_Then, until that day comes, I’ll entrust the Forest upkeep to you…Underground Crow._

(Higher and farther than anyone ever has before.)

_Yes, Father._

 

* * *

 

(When I get there,

I’ll do exactly what you told me to, Cera.

—For no one’s sake but my own.)

 


	8. now i'm searching (for a reason)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An interlude, sung in introspective measures.

Cleaning up the streets as a Runner is easy.

He doesn’t enlist help.

He doesn’t need it.

Help is for the weak, for the washed-out Strays on street corners begging for spare change and scraps, for those of waning confidence in how much they can endure.

Crows are nothing if not valiant.

Levi takes on these jobs because he can.

Not because he has to.

Not even the Don himself – indebted by association or otherwise – can hold him here.

But he does stay, at least for not, to bide his time and wait for the right time to strike.

If anything, he can earn a bit of pocket change from the ‘jobs’ he takes on. Father never asks for more than what his indebted owe him and Levi never tells him how fortunate they both are.

It’s fortunate for them both that he’s is good at what he does.

Fortunate for them both that he’s learned long ago how to pick pockets as well as he does locks.

So he takes a bit of gild as a service fee – every time he comes across a client who’s easy to knock off their feet unconscious – and stows it away in a safer locale than his small apartment suite, knowing a bit pinched here and there could get him to where he wants to go that much sooner.

So he takes a bit of his pride to swallow back – every time Father calls him in to have a ‘talk’ about his unconventional Running methods – and feigns obedience, knowing a bit of conformity now will mean a chance at mutiny for later is better than none at all.

So he takes a bit of the many things his Brothers left behind – the immaterial possessions, their legacy as an enforcement team – and leaves them out on the living room coffee table, knowing their purpose is to remind him in moments of doubt what he’s doing this for.

The sooner he can fly to the Surface, Levi thinks, the better.

The sooner he can fly on his own, Levi thinks, the better.

The sooner he can fly on wings steady and strong enough to leave this place, Levi thinks, the better.


	9. watch it now (here he comes)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a Trick leads a Weasel, a Hawk, and a Crow into the Forest - and the Forest, inadvertently, leads two fated individuals to meet at last.

Sooner rather than later, Levi finds his chance in the form of an accident.

 

* * *

There’s an annoying little tick of a Trick that Father’s been harping about.

Levi’s been given the job to find him, naturally, and keep an eye out on his patrol days for a pesky little Trick in sheep’s clothing who moonlights for a local faction. It’s one that’s fairly new but it’s been gaining members in the double-digits by the day.

They have reason to believe, too, that the man used to belong to the West End’s Family, chewing through the widespread net wound about the district’s many sub-alliances to find new leadership.

The Don wants the conspirator offed for his disloyalty, of course.

But his instructions were clear: only kill him after you’ve shaken him down for any and all information the Family could use.

The Family is, after all, a self-contained information network that profits from those who would pay a hefty sum for its borrowed secrets.

That’s how it’s always been. How they’ve always done their business. The men of the Family impose control on the denizens of Lower Sina while the women of the Family maintain a ‘clean’ image by planning and conquering from behind the men most loyal to them.

But the Underground Crow is an exception to their unspoken conventions, their intelligence gatherer as well as a messenger with several friends in high places who keep him in the know.

Isabel and Farlan were his.

Now long past the age of entrepreneurship by scavenging the Junkyard for wares to sell for an extra meal, they were a trio that roved the Forest like animals on the prowl.

Isabel keeps the Tricks tripping over their misapprehensions with her childlike visage and snares rats with relative ease in fangs suddenly revealed as only one as cunning as a Weasel can.

Farlan keeps the Tricks tarrying over traps laid to lure them from the narrow alleyways to closer distances with a learned effortlessness that only a bird of prey like the Hawk would possess.

Levi keeps the Tricks troubled by lurking in the shifting shadows meant to unnerve and lies in wait until the Crow swiftly pecks at their eyes to hinder their strongest sense of all.

Weasel, Hawk, and Crow.

A trio incomparable, taught from a young age how to survive in a realm as unforgiving as the Underground.

They were the closest thing Levi had to call comrades.

 

* * *

 

But today is different.

Today, Levi walks the backstreets alone.

And that’s why, when the Trick he happens to be looking for runs headlong into him on his way out of the alley, Levi doesn’t even think when he reaches for his pocketknife hiding under his boot cuff.

He gets a good look of the guy who fell right on his ass backwards then.

It’s him.

 _Definitely_ him.

The man fits the descriptions provided.

The way he recoils at the sight is all the validation Levi needs.

Cowards, Levi almost scoffs aloud, and straightens up to give the Trick something to really start shaking about.

Until he spots a flash of silver lying on the pavement not far from where the Trick remains rooted to the spot.

Until he reaches for the scratched and scuffed pocketwatch, wondering what sort of pretty price it would fetch in the marketplace, and leans down to claim it as his own.

Until he hears the heavy footfalls – and a voice, winded but strong, rumbling from above him – of purposeful steps moving toward him.

“I believe that watch belongs to me, boy.”

Levi rises to his feet to the stranger’s implicit command.

And how strange this stranger is, indeed.

Born and raised beneath the Surface, Levi nevertheless heard the stories, heard the tales of their thwarted triumphs.

Individuals garbed in green, giving their souls away for the sake of a war waged against Humanity’s Bane.

Riding through the greenery that marks the landscape outside the Walls and doing battle against Titans, more idealist fools than crusading warriors, the Scouting Legion was the underdog of the military’s forged ranks.

Why one of them would be _here_ of all places, he hasn’t the slightest idea.

“This asshole,” Levi punctuates his declarative intent with a sharp kick to the Trick lying on the cobblestone, now doubled over, “owes me one, though. I’ve been on the lookout for him, but you led him right to me. Congratulations.”

A soldier like him, Levi knows, has no place here.

“Not to mention, this pretty little trinket?” The rusted chain, the watch itself, is light enough for him to flick his wrist and send it sailing skybound, easier still to catch on the way down. “Hardly seems your style, old man.”

All soldiers are cowards, Levi thinks with derision he can hardly hide.

All talk and no action.

He’s always known, deep down, that someone someday was bound to prove him wrong.


	10. you are a stranger here (why have you come?)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the confrontation continues - and ends - in the most befitting way possible for a Nightingale and (his future) Golden Boy.

Levi’s arm hits the jagged exterior of the nearby edifice wall first.

The rest of his body pushed and pinned against it soon follows.

As does his immediate reactions.

( _Push away, swing back, push back on your heels, reverse— shit, better throw a left hook, then, if you can’t manage to knock him off his feet— dammit, bastard must’ve saw it coming, but it kinda was a cheap shot—_ )

A snap, a snarl, he snaps his teeth bared struggles against the soldier’s hold, a cursory glance over the slight of his shoulder revealing the damn Trick’s already slipped away.

He doesn’t bother looking skyward.

( _Isabel and Farlan won’t need me to catch a runaway Trick like him. We’ve done it before and we’ll do it again._ )

“More importantly than repaying old debts,” Levi realizes, belatedly, that he’s dropped his pocketknife in the scrimmage and not the watch clutched tight in his wound fist, “I’d say you need to take care not to make assumptions about a stranger’s age.”

“Look who’s talking,” Levi immediately retorts, and _fuck, the big bastard’s **heavy** —_ “And for your information, I’m fifteen, Legion dog. No matter how ridiculously tall you are, we know which of us is getting up there in age.”

That’s when Levi turns to get a good look at the suddenly silent soldier.

 

( _Have I ever told you what he looks like?_

_Why bother? He’s probably an old geezer by now._

_We’re the same age, though._

_Yeah, but you’re not an old geezer._

_Neither is my Golden Boy, little nightingale._ )

That’s when Levi prepares to counter whatever gets thrown at him.

 

( _Fine._

_…Fine?_

_Say I meet this Golden Boy of yours._

_I hope you will, one of these days. Maybe when you’re older, wiser, and he as well._

_So how am I supposed to know it’s him?_

_Well, for one thing, you won’t be able to miss eyes as blue and as wide as his. Or how easy it is to ruffle that neatly combed hair and that composure of his once you get him to let his guard down._

_I need something more than what he looks or acts like, Cera._ )

 

That’s when he remembers.

 

( _Then how about a name to call him by?_ )

“For **your** information, you’re speaking to the one who rounds up the ‘dogs’ to take a bite out of the Titans.”

( _Which is?_ )

 

“Erwin Smith, 13th Commander of the Scouting Legion.”

As the seconds tick by, Levi turns around.

“Well, then.” Levi’s frame goes lax, marred by faux submission – no indication given for what he intends to do next. “ While I’m speaking to the oh-so-illustrious Commander Smith of the Legion, you’ll want a name to call your latest conquest by, I presume?”

 

( _When you two meet someday – and I know you will – remember this:_

_Erwin’s the sort who wanted to know everyone’s name, everyone’s story._

_So tell him yours when he asks for it, okay?_ )

 

As soon as he turns, Levi’s sterling stare meets clear cerulean.

 

( _You can’t be serious._

_Cera, you don’t even tell **clients** your real name. _

_How the hell am I supposed to trust some stranger I’ve never even met before with mine?_ )

 

“A name,” Smith remarks, almost indulgent, “would be much appreciated.”

 

( _You can._

_And you should._

_He’s my Golden Boy, Levi._ )

 

As if that explanation alone would persuade him.

 

( _That doesn’t mean I should just…give him my name_

_like some blind-sighted idiot._

_Golden Boy or no, he’s not worth getting killed when my back’s turned._ )

 

As if that coercion alone would earn his trust.

 

( _What if Erwin Smith could let you borrow wings_

_to fly away from this awful Underground_

_and make it to a place far better than here?_ )

 

As if the future itself had already been decided.

 

( _I’ll believe it when I see it._ )

 

But even Erwin Smith couldn’t have seen this coming.

Swifter than any learned Legion scout, fiercer than any Titan would dare to be, the Underground Crow lands a solid blow to his solar plexus.

A single sweeping motion sends his opponent falling backward.

Right to the pavement, Smith lands, wincing only at the stifled _thump_ of his pocketwatch dropped unceremonious on his heaving chest.

Unrelenting blue affixed to the silver undertones of the younger one’s eyes, not once regarding the boot sole.

A sole that hovers dangerously close to the space between sternum and rib cage where his still-beating heart rests.

( _You will._

_It’s only natural._

_After all—_ )

 

“…It’s Levi.”

 

( _—If there’s anyone I can see strong enough to grant power to those who need it to survive_

_and kind enough to win over the gentlest of hearts and the hardest of hearts worn like Titan skin alike,_

_—He_ is _my Golden Boy._ )

 

“Consider that my debt repaid,” Levi says, at the last possible second before he flees for higher ground, “for calling you an ‘old man’ before.”


	11. silently, this moment flows into my heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which reflection and resolutions offer little rest for the weary - and even less of it for the curious Nightingale.

They catch the Trick, in the end, Isabel having led him right to Farlan’s set-up blockades.

While she passionately recounts the way the brute flipped over and crash-landed right into the trash pile trap, Farlan pauses in tying up the ruffian to ask if Levi ‘took care’ of the soldier that held him up.

“I wouldn’t be able to show my face,” Levi answers back, “if I hadn’t.”

“Seriously, what was that guy’s deal?” The final knot secured, Farlan’s look of unease returns. “Most Green-Coats don’t come down here in uniform, let alone with their crests visible.”

“Probably some self-righteous prick from the MP,” Isabel scoffs, “visiting his courtesan for the night.”

“Military Police,” Farlan points out, “don’t wear the Wings of Freedom, Isabel. And wasn’t he chasing the Trick in the **opposite** direction of the red-light district?”

The Trick, knocked out cold, splutters in his sleep.

Isabel, pouting, leans her sprightly form on Farlan’s shoulders.

“Whatever,” the Weasel dismisses his subtle jabs – figuratively and literally, it seems, as he attempts to push her away with his elbows. “Next time he’s stupid enough to show his face around here again, want us to ‘take care’ of him?”

“No,” Levi tells her, so vehement that even Farlan looks surprised. “Since I couldn’t make heads or tails of his motives before, I let him off easy. For now, let’s just keep our eyes and ears open for anything on Erwin Smith.”

Both fall into brief silence.

Their consideration only lasts so long, however.

“Nice, Big Bro.” The tiny rows of her jagged rows of teeth glint. “A new mark’s the perfect way to add a little excitement in our lives.”

“As if we don’t have enough of that on a regular basis,” Farlan’s wry twist of his mouth almost sardonic as his associates appear around the corner to whisk the Trick away to Father. “But, well. Wherever the action is, you know I’m there.”

“Me too,” Isabel adds, carting the Trick over her shoulder and rendering the hired help useless.

Levi says nothing, merely nods in response, and the Crow follows the Weasel and Hawk deeper into the Forest awaiting their return.

 

* * *

 

(But even once he’s retired to his apartment for the night, Levi tosses and turns in bed as he ponders why he doesn’t feel any sense of regret in revealing his name – feels no regret in having stolen the Legion’s winged crest from the Commander’s sleeve, either, the fraying threads under his thumb and forefinger falling apart – while the stitches over his too-tight heart begin to do the same.)

 


	12. you can't have peace without a war

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the push and pull of two curiosities - and two minds more alike than either realize - lead them back together again (and again).

Next time, as it turns out, he does learn more of Erwin Smith.

Many times, as the coming weeks reveal, are full of discoveries.

Early one morning, a restless Levi happens upon Smith on the opposite end of the district where they first crossed paths.

This time, the Runner notes, Smith’s returned in much less conspicuous garb. Faded suit set, near immaculate hair slicked back. A willingness to network, obviously, based on his many contacts and the bribe bags exchanged at length.

If anyone were none the wiser, they’d never suspect the blond wasn’t born in the Underground.

If any Underground denizen were none the wiser, they’d never suspect he was of military rank.

Still, if any Underground denizen were that dense, they’d be a dense skeleton six feet under by now.

But just as Levi’s tenacity to stay alive keeps him cautious, Smith’s tenacity in searching for…whatever it is he’s searching for is something else.

He doesn’t let the pickpockets get the better of him anymore.

The younger ones – who steal gild and other belongings as unaware visitors carry on their business – are often the most difficult ones to avoid.  

But they stop in their tracks when Smith turns to them.

Like tempered wildcats, they slink back into their box-tower shelters and shantyhomes as if shunned by the eye contact alone.

Once, he hands off a _toy_ to a particularly persistent little runt from the Family’s outer ring of associates.

Sunny’s a tiny little thing, smaller than Isabel was when they first found her as a snot-nosed seven-year-old in the Junkyard trash heaps. An Underground-born child. A surly one, at that, if not a surefire top choice for the thievery division of their Family business.

Levi’s never seen Sneaky Sunny light up like she had the moment Smith placed a red-painted top in her outstretched hand, sending her scruffy mane askew with a light ruffle of his gentle palm on her head.

Sunny isn’t the first or the last to fall for Smith’s charms.

He’s been approached, several times, by ladies of the night.

Waiflike, sweet-tongued ladies.

For the ordinary hapless soldiers, they are temptation personified. Welcome company to those men who have submitted their souls to the Scouting Legion.

It’s a higher South End courtesan who approaches him, propositions on the tips of her rouge-tinged mouth.

Throughout the exchange, Smith allows her hand straying down his lower back and, briefly, Levi wonders if he’ll take the bait.

Briefly, Levi contemplates the possibility that he won’t fall for it.

Briefly, Levi wonders if Smith would be different, would avoid this blatant laid trap as he himself has many a time before.

Briefly, just as he turns to leave for a meeting with the East End’s Family head, Levi catches sight of his answer.

A silvered practiced smile.

Faint frown lines suddenly visible.

She departs for more accommodating guests while he, staring after her, murmurs a mild rebuff in an almost inaudible chuckle: _those nails near left claw marks on my wrist._

So Levi lingers until Smith has, for some reason, spun about on his heel, begun to leave.

Until Smith has, for some reason, tipped his head back and sends his glance skyward, toward where Levi hides perched between rafters.

Until Levi has, for some reason, begun to wonder if Smith _knows_ how Levi’s watched him.

If Smith knows how Levi’s observed where and when he goes where deigns he must.

If he does, Levi realizes, Smith must know that he’s—

(“Curious,” is Smith’s vague murmur on the vaguely curled ends of his lips, a smile that Levi finds, for some reason, sets the space above his stomach fluttering and lurching like he’s just been sent off his balance entirely, like in their first alleyway skirmish, and dammit, _dammit_ , Levi thinks, how he loathes this infuriating man and his investigative tendencies and how Cera’s words haunt him even now and how they keep on finding each other, again and again, even when he wants so much to leave his past and his bottled-up regrets behind—)

—but, as soon as Levi blinks, Erwin Smith is gone.


	13. so the storm finally found me and left me in the dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Weasel and Hawk and the Crow discuss where to go from here and several more going-ons provide brief levity to a burdened boy who needed it most.

“So,” Farlan starts off, once they’ve all dropkicked down to a safe balcony’s edge to discuss their month’s findings like always, “what’ve you got, Isabel?”

“I’ve got a bunch of eyewitnesses who say,” Isabel whispers, conspiratorial, “his hair never moves. Oh, and he’s got arms big enough to pick up at least two ox-sized bushels, _easy._ ”

Farlan’s chuckle echoes amidst the late-night autumn frost.

“How about something we don’t already know,” Levi snorts, petting Isabel’s hair when she pouts, “just by looking at him?”

“He’s a real righteous sort.” Farlan’s reconnaissance led him all the way to the North End, where he’s sent other Carriers to keep watch on Smith’s Underground activities. Interest piqued, both Levi and Isabel lean forward to hear what Farlan’s informants reported. “Turns out the man came here for business. Northern and Western Contacts confirm he’s asking around, believe it or not, about the Titans.”

“What about the Titans?” Isabel, lounging, lets her feet thump out the protest her hands would have otherwise motioned. “He’s not gonna find anyone who knows jack about how to beat ’em down here.”

She’s right.

“Doubt he’ll find anyone willing to enlist,” Farlan adds, dry wit in full force. “Unless they want a ticket out of this place paid in a premature death sentence.”

“Unless,” Levi hums, “he knows something we don’t.”

Farlan balks around the same time Isabel squawks and scrambles upright.

“Big Bro,” the redhead beams, like her accomplices lent her some great discovery. “Are you actually defending this guy?”

“Like hell,” Levi grunts. “Bastard had me in an armlock that had my arm smarting for at least four days after— I’m the last person in this sorry shithole you should accuse of _defending_ him.”

“Don’t deny it.” Isabel unties her ponytail, smirk directed – and reflected – in Farlan’s visible amusement. “Me and Farlan saw you. Trailed you at least three out of the six weeks since and totally saw you chasing him around, West End to East End. Like a little lost puppy.”

“And why the fuck,” Levi growls, unnerved by their descriptor, “were you following me around?”

“Hey,” Farlan manages a serious tone, his grin not quite hidden behind his sleeve cuffs, “we go wherever the action is. And you did tell us to keep our eyes and ears on Smith.”

“It’s like you always know where to find him,” Isabel enthuses. “That’s our Underground Crow!”

Levi reaches for Isabel, then, for a much more thorough hair-ruffling.

Until Farlan, as usual, finds a way to intervene.

“Although,” the silver-haired teen points out, “you’ve probably found out a ton more about Smith than we ever could.”

“Right,” Levi clucks at them both, “and the Don plans to give us a week off from patrol duties.”

They all get a good laugh over that.

“Seriously, Levi, tell us. What’ve you found out about him that we haven’t?”

Whatever irritation felt all but dissipates as Levi takes a deep breath.

“Well…”

 

* * *

 

(The conversations Levi happened to have heard, chose to eavesdrop on, were worth listening to.)

“For one thing, the asshole knows how to talk.”

(Except his attention wasn’t on the topic of their talk.)

“Does he now?”

(Far from it.)

“Are you kidding? With the bribes he was giving the messengers and those so-called soothsayers, they might as well have been eating out of his hands.”

(But he had no idea what to expect when he rounded the corner.)

“Apparently, there’s plenty of rumors flying around outside the Underground. Some government conspiracy and human experimentation or some shit.”

(He heard the strange hush that fell over them after the sounds of footfalls, thuds, and short-lived combat finds itself cut even shorter by a rasping voice that breaks the uneven silence.)

“If you ask me,” Levi says, watching Isabel and Farlan lean in enquiringly at his bated breath, “Erwin Smith’s the farthest thing from ignorant.”

 

* * *

 

 

(He’s heard, before, from Cera’s many recitations of Old World folktales and history, read a couple of those Banned Books he’s managed to acquire even before he could understand the implications of their content.)

“So he’s smart enough to know,” Farlan asks, tentative, “what he’s getting into?”

( _Will you be the one who extinguishes the flames of war outside of these Walls, Erwin of Sina, or will you be the first to dance through the fire within them?_ )

“Smart…I don’t know if I’d call him smart.”

( _Far from it, I intend to carry the strength of the Ocean along with me into the fray – and a torch to light the path for others to follow.)_

“But he’s definitely brave as shit for coming here with nothing but himself as a weapon, trying to wage some war of sedition.”

_(Because you wish to quench the thirst of these Monsters who plague Humanity so?)_

“Then,” Isabel hums, chin propped under folded palms, “what’s your verdict, Big Bro? Is he a Rat or a Mouse?”

 _(No sooner than I wish to drown the earthly desires of the ‘monsters’ who plague those of us who fight for such a cause, madam._ )

“Neither. But whatever animal he is, Smith’s not a threat to us. Or anyone in the Underground, for that matter.”

_(My first impression of you was a mistake, Erwin of Sina. You’re hardly a man of the military at all—)_

“But he’s definitely, without a doubt—”

( _—not whilst those eyes of a wild beast belong to you._ )

“—a fucking swan’s song for the Titans.”

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t expect Farlan and Isabel to do anything less than have a good-natured giggle and gaggle over his crassness, to believe him when he tells them there’s no need to worry about what Erwin Smith is up to in the Underground.

He doesn’t expect to feel any sort of self-satisfaction having told them the partial truth, the notations without the full story divulged, when he instructs them not to worry about watching Erwin Smith as closely anymore.

He doesn’t expect to find any sort of explanation at all for his defensiveness, for his insistence on easing up on their circumspect shadowing of one Commander Erwin Smith.

 

* * *

 

 

Or for why he continues to keep his eyes and ears open for the next month to follow when – for no explanation whatsoever – Erwin Smith stops appearing in the Underground.


	14. tell me that you still recall (my name)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the bitter cold of winter isn't the only thing to return to the Underground and Levi learns of the inexplicable pull of one Erwin Smith.

“Hey, Old Man.  Not wearing your fancy cape and uniform today?”

The seasons have changed by the time they meet again.

A month.

A little over a month’s time.

A month spent trying to focus on carrying out his filial duties, on slowly cleaning out the many boxes of his Brothers’ things that line his borrowed apartment space, on distant goals of freeform flight and wings of boundless blue and gossamer gray.

A month of dreaming about those who preoccupy his thoughts in the waking world as well.

“You’re rather underdressed yourself,” says the off-duty Commander, “Levi.”

He’s dreamed about them sometimes – about his Brothers, about Cera.

Ever since that night, it’s been that way. He’s no longer surprised by the dreams, far more accepting in reality than in the realm of slumber to the fact that they’re gone from this world.

But even for a few hours that feel like mere minutes to his subconscious, he’s glad to see them again.

He’s not quite so glad or any sooner able to rationalize why his nighttime visions sometimes include Erwin Smith too.

“These are my street clothes.” They are, of course, to Levi. He unearthed Connor’s jacket from a mislabeled box just the other day and these thick jeans were just right for the winter’s coming. “Erwin, right?”

But like Connor’s jacket wrapped around his too-wiry frame, the name doesn’t feel just right for Levi.

It slips out, however, before he can stop himself.

“A touch more casual than I’m used to, but…yes.  That is my name.”

A stranger. That’s what Erwin Smith is. Levi has to remind himself.

No matter how closely he’s watched the older man over the past few months, the person who stands at this cornerside bakery doorstep is a stranger – not someone to call out to casually by given name.

Even if Erwin Smith knows his.

“Then deal with it.” But _what the hell_ , Levi thinks, _the bastard took it in stride._ “You keep calling me Levi, so it’s only fair.”

Like in times past, in moments of speculative observation turned faithful fascination, this stranger’s honest smile knows exactly how to coax Levi’s careful guard down.

In a single gesture, no less.

“Fair enough,” the Commander laughs – or, Levi wonders briefly, is it Erwin whose open expression makes the Runner avert his gaze upon seeing it? – as he begins trotting after Levi when the younger one turns for home.

As if it were a matter of course.

As if Levi, prone to these moments of idle curiosity, would let him.

As if – as the minutes and wayward citizens passed them by and Erwin was the one following him for a change – Levi’s intention was to let him.

 ( _What if Erwin Smith could let you borrow wings to fly away from this awful Underground and make it to a place far better than here?_ )

He can't, Levi thinks, the ends of his lips pressed firm together, his jacket pulled more securely around himself.

He can’t.

There’s no way he could.

“Hey. If you came all this way, at least get your sorry ass indoors so you don’t end up having it frozen off.”

He peers over his shoulder just enough to see Erwin, looking off into the distance, meditative, at the pallid flecks just starting to drift from monochrome skies barely lit high above them.

Everywhere but where Levi’s stopped in front of him.

“Hey,” Levi grinds out again, “are you planning on standing there all fucking night or what?”

Erwin blinks fast.

“I’m sorry. My mind was elsewhere.” He looks more than slightly abashed, though Levi’s glower might have something to do with it. “Did you just ask me something—?”

“I said,” Levi sulks, wrenching off his fur-lined hood and motioning at the corroded door of the high-rise in front of them, “are you coming in or what?”

That, apparently, does the trick.

“Ah,” Erwin intones, the gathering wisps of conflicting air currents moving around his mouth. “And here I assumed that was your plan all along.”

“Well, you know what they say about assumptions,” Levi sneers.  “Don’t make an ass out of me and you, old man.”

 

* * *

 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Levi knows his own assumptions may be wrong.

But he also knows what Cera’s told him of Erwin (of his privileged upbringing, of his inquisitive spirit, of his interest in learning the how and why of things) and he hopes that they aren’t wrong.

He hopes that he’s not about to be proven wrong.

 


	15. when you were here before, couldn't look you in the eye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which words are exchanged, walls of the metaphysical variety begin to crumble, and the worst - at least for Levi - is yet to come.

The ascent to the apartment’s top floor happens in near silence.

He doesn’t offer introductions. No spreading out the welcoming mat here. His little suite’s nothing so spectacular that he feels he needs to.

But then again, Erwin doesn’t seem to pay any mind to him once he steps inside.

The narrow gaps between furniture.

The cramped kitchen and the weathered wood of the neighboring living room area’s coffee table.

The boxes that line the apartment walls, unopened.

“How long” the silence, once stifling, fragments as soon as Levi motions for an idle and observing Erwin to join him on the couch, “have you been living here?”

It shouldn’t surprise Levi, a question so upfront.

“You mean this shithole,” a quick wave thereabouts, “or the slums?”

It shouldn’t surprise Levi that Erwin should reach out, tentative, for a house of cards towering in meticulously laid stacks in the middle of the table.

Erwin’s vague motion sidles toward his pocketknife collection at the coffee table corner.

Not for too long.

But long enough for Levi to notice.

“Both,” says the Commander, retracting his hand with his open remark, “if you aren’t adverse to sharing.”

If only he was.

But he pauses. Considers it.

“As long as I can remember,” the Runner admits at length, “having this name.”

“So ‘Levi’ is a name you were given,” Erwin’s eyes meets his at last, seeking clarification. “Not your given name at birth.”

“Everyone who works in the Underground gets a name assigned to them.” He doesn’t expect Erwin to understand. “Granted, I’m sort of a special case.”

A special case, Erwin’s searching gaze seems to question him, in the Underground and among uncommon company.

Then again, a well-bred Upper Sina military man with a perverse interest in Titan lore isn’t exactly common, either.

“Should I assume by a ‘special case,’” the man _starts_ , a sight that should amuse Levi for how broad-built and wide-eyed he is, “you mean—”

No, Levi discovers at that very moment, Erwin knows.

Erwin understands.

More than anyone outside of the Family ever should.

 

* * *

 

At his identity’s disclosure, Levi feels no sense of dread.

At his visitor’s silence, Levi feels no such sense of burgeoning fear.

At Erwin’s sharp intake of breath, Levi feels something decidedly different.

 

* * *

 

Still, he holds no such faith in Erwin Smith.

Not here.

Not in this silent standoff.

“You do realize,” Levi feels it, then, his instinct to fight, fight, _fight_ as Erwin’s voice trembles, “I could have you put in prison if I wanted to.”

“If you wanted to. You could.” He finds he has no more scruples, no airs to put up. No more insensitive visages or defenses. “I know that.”

It’s a challenge.

A hair’s breadth from contention.

But while alliances and backstreet battles are powerful here in the Underground, knowledge was an even stronger weapon.

Levi knew.

Erwin wouldn't do it.

He wouldn't, Levi realized then, not so long as the Runner too knew of his reconnaissance among his Underground contacts.

“Then why,” asks Erwin, form taut as Levi’s posture lifts ever so slight from the couch and the clench of his hand curls tense around the armrest’s edge in preparation to leap and leave, “did you let me follow you here?”

 _Fight_ , his flight-prone urge screams at his hesitation.

 

* * *

 

Levi moves, then.

Levi moves, leaning over Erwin as he reaches out a hand ever so slowly.

Only to place it, almost gingerly, on the clasp at his right shoulder.

“I figured,” Levi moves so close to the unguarded line of Erwin’s jugular, his coat and scarf long left at the door, that he should be more than able to put Erwin in a stranglehold from this position, so **easily** , but he continues on, “if you wanted to kill me, you’d have already done it by now.”

Levi knew.

Erwin wouldn’t do it.

Because he didn’t have the guts to do it, either.

 

* * *

 

So when Erwin laughs over what he’s just told him, Levi isn’t sure how to react at first.

Until Erwin keeps on laughing.

Until Levi – despite how much the unsettling regret churns within, despite how little he believes in the stories Cera told him – begins to laugh too.

Soon, they’re both laughing.

Several minutes past the time Levi notices how he slumps against Erwin for support, crowing turned hysterics intensifying, struggling for air because he can’t recall a time he’s laughed that hard, the younger man’s already decided.

He’s made up his mind.

“What the hell,” Levi wheezes after the half-hearted punches and the sniggering fade off. “You seriously thought I was gonna kill you or what?”

“Of course not.” At his latest attempt to test Erwin’s tolerance for elbows to his side, Levi earns himself a shove that nearly pushes him off the couch outright. “But you do have this look about you like you could kill a man twice my size, if not a Titan, all by yourself.”

There’s a disquieting silence that takes over, then, as Levi’s prospects yield to the present.

“If I told you I’ve killed plenty of men,” Levi declares, seized by a sudden surge of honesty, “would you trust me any less?”

Predisposed to cynicism as he is, Levi is surprised by Erwin’s reaction.

A shake of his head.

“You trusted me with your life. I trust you with mine. It’s as simple as that.”

Levi turns away from Erwin as he mutters, “simple.”

As if it could ever be that way.

As if it mattered in the long term.

As if trust was a matter of equivalent exchange.

“And why the hell,” Levi adds after a silent bout no one’s bound to win, “would the high and mighty Commander Smith want to put his trust in a criminal?”

As if trust was a matter of equivalent exchange, as if they were more than acquaintances.

As if Levi could believe him.

“Because I think you’d make an excellent soldier,” Erwin smiles, “and an even better scout.”

 

* * *

 

(Long after he’s kicked the coffee table and its other various contents to the barewood floor – and kicks Erwin, compliant to his snarled request, out of the apartment – Levi learns that it isn’t dread in the back of his mind or fear stored in a corner of his heart that leads him to _live for no one except myself_.

It’s regret, piled high, like the houses of cards once arranged in the center of his borrowed apartment home now scattered across the floor.

Like the remainder of his resolve, along with the last of his self-imposed sanctions, to live and die by the creed of the Underground’s Family.)

 


	16. foreshadowing, forsaken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the winds of change whip through the solemn streets of Lower Sina and the Crow parts ways with the Weasel and the Hawk as the night draws into itself - as do, unbeknownst to Levi, the final grains of sand in the hourglass of his found family's time spent together.

Slipping out to the Surface, as it turns out, is simple.

As simple as his plan to take to the night like a shadowed specter camouflaged by moonlight alone.

As simple as his plan to bribe the guards posted at the junction gates leading into Sina’s industrial district.

As simple as his plan to secure Farlan and Isabel’s accordance to carry on in his stead.

 

* * *

 

Simple, as it turns out, is more complicated than his plan accounted for.

“So…it’s official? I can’t call you Big Bro anymore?”

Isabel was never was the type to indulge in passivity.

Not in this or anything else.

Farlan wasn’t much for acquiescence, either, but he’s known how much Levi’s longed to escape the Underground longer than the youngest of their trio.

“It’s not all doom and gloom, Isabel.” The lighter-haired youth pats her slouching shoulders. “Just think: we’ll get a promotion. We’ll finally get our pay raise. Finally!”

“And more money,” she leaps at her own realization, “means more food.”

Which is when something else occurs to Isabel.

“—But who’ll take your old job Running, Big Bro?” Isabel huffs, not quite petulant but the closest mimicry of it a thirteen-year-old girl could manage. “You’ve always been great at what you do, so Father won’t let any ol’ Family member take over.”

“Or would he,” Farlan offers, “to try and get you to come back?”

Levi wouldn’t put that past the Don.

“I’ll nominate you both for the position,” Levi assures them, even if he can’t guarantee that his friends will earn their new titles, ruffles Isabel’s hair and shrugs his cloak back on. “If anything, use the fact you’ve worked under me the last two years to your advantage.”

Someone blocks him at the door, keeping Levi from exiting the abandoned warehouse.

He’s more surprised not by the action but by who it is that stops him.

“Farlan,” Isabel stares, red-rimmed eyes wet. Like she knows what he’s about to say.

Levi thinks he does, too.

“Hey. You know we didn’t do this just because Father told us to.” Farlan swallows around his visible trepidation as he speaks. “Protégés or Runners or what have you. None of those titles matter to us. ‘Fuck the Family’s hierarchy and it’s shitty system,’ right?”

Levi would laugh at his own quote being used against him – like he had the week previous, when Erwin followed him back to his apartment – if not for what Farlan says next.

Levi would laugh, but he struggles to keep his expression in check instead.

“You’re **our** family. Always have been, always will be.” Levi would laugh away how embarrassed he feels (because _this cheeky bastard,_ thinking he’s some kind of orator, putting on a show like he’s tough as shit when he’s never even given a proper speech in his life) but he’s never seen the other boy so surefire sober, so serious, and he’s at a loss for words. “They can say whatever they want about you, but we know what The Underground Crow’s real legacy is.”

Levi looks at it, then.

At them.

He looks at Isabel, her eyes bright and her teeth grit tight.

He looks at Farlan, his mouth a hard line and his resolve harder still.

He looks at the stars before pushing the door open himself, his hood slips away from his trembling throat that are, for once, visible from this vantage point.

“I know,” Levi tells them, voice soft and strained and sent to the glistening skies as he takes his first steps toward departure. “And…thanks.”

 

* * *

 

That night, if Isabel or Farlan heard the wishes wrapped in that awkward goodbye ( _take care of each other, don’t let them keep you here forever, and when it’s time for you to spread your wings, come find me_ ), he never knew.

He never would know.

Because that night – the night the Underground Crow left his post for skies higher and freer than any he’d ever flown in before – was the last he would ever see or hear of Isabel Magnolia and Farlan Church.

 


	17. to find me there, to find you there

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the former Runner happens across a chance as steady as a Rock, loses his chance just as swiftly, and gains from the experience a lesson - in kindness.

Sina’s industrial district isn’t the only place Levi takes to exploring.

That said, Middle Sina’s not bad.

Not bad at all.

It’s grimy like the Underground in some sections, near pristine in others, but it’s also ridiculously **sprawling** and, extensive as the Underground is, he never expected it to extend as far as it does.

At least, Levi reasons, lodgings are easy to come by.

Abandoned buildings.

Homes long vacated.

A night or two in a motel, as long as he can spare it.

Until he’s done enough odds-and-ends jobs to not have to ration his long-saved shillings, he’ll conserve his strength,

Until he has a mental map of the different districts he aims to make his domain, approaching those who don’t seem the mistrustful or dishonest type, he’ll bide his time.

Until he’s tracked down Erwin Smith who – fucking _bastard_ **–** stole his favorite pocketknife right under his nose that day, Levi will wait.

 

* * *

 

At least, Levi reasons, he doesn’t have to wait to find food around here.

For one thing, the local marketplace and streetside shops aren’t as wary about their pickpockets like in Lower Sina’s outskirts.

For another, they don’t even **notice** if someone nicks a few fruits or a loaf of bread from their wares.

Besides, here, there’s one place Levi never has to steal from.

There’s a local miller in this district, one that he lingers in for more than a day’s time.

Levi stops there every morning, in fact.

He almost has to, given how the miller’s family leaves out milk and mead and sweetbread for the stray animals that wander the alleyways out by the bakery’s back porch.

So even if this bustling district isn’t a permanent setting by any means, he almost had to take advantage of their generosity.

He still freezes in his tracks, though, when he’s nearly caught pilfering half the sliced loaf.

On the final day he intends to stick around, even.

 _Dammit_ , Levi thinks, biting his tongue as footsteps and a frowning face round the open doorway.

“That’s for the stray cats and birds, you know.” The girl looks about as old as Isabel, if not a year or two younger, shoulder-length chestnut hair pulled back into a ponytail. She looks as though she’s emerged from the kitchen, sleeves folded and apron loose, and her exuberance is admirable even as she sighs, “If you’re hungry, then wait here, please? I’d be glad give you a fresh loaf.”

“Forget it,” drawls Levi, not wanting to stick around and be discovered by any adults – or, worse, the Military Police. “Your animal friends can have the rest and I’ll just get—”

“Just wait here,” she repeats, “please.”

It’s only after she turns on her heel (and Levi isn’t even sure why he’s stuck around this long) that she adds something else to her command.

“I’m not planning on calling anyone, okay?” If it’s meant to be reassurance, Levi doesn’t feel it. “It’s just me and the kitchenhands today, since Mama and Papa are out making their delivery rounds. I’m just leaving to go grab you a bag to take with you and be back in one minute, promise!”

He can’t sense any deception on her.

No body language tics, no visual cues to the contrary.

If anything, Levi thinks, she resembles Isabel in more than the brightness of her gaze and her straightforward mannerisms.

“Fine,” Levi grunts, relenting, as the girl beams, “but I’m timing you. Start counting and get moving, kid.”

 

* * *

 

Her eyes are bright when she returns to hand off enough bread and milk to last him into the next week and Levi, after some consideration, asks her for a name.

“Petra Ral,” she announces, preening, as if she can’t wait to tell him. As if she’s proud of her family, her identity, her background. “It’s very nice to meet you! But, now that I think about it, I don’t think you’ve told me yours…”

Considering he doesn’t plan on coming back, Levi thinks, it’s the least he can do.

“It’s Levi.” He lingers, sticks around long enough to spot the fulminations that spark her smile and invite the twitching corners of his. “Nice to meet you, Petra Ral.”

 

* * *

 

He has no idea, at the time, that it won’t be the first time Petra’s kindness would be of help to him, to his future comrades-in-arms.

But Levi has no idea, at the time, just how important the trust he’s granted will become.

The hope he’s entrusted in Cera.

In Isabel and Farlan.

In Petra Ral.

(In Erwin, too – though Levi would not learn of why and to what extent until five years later.)


	18. the truth is never far behind (you kept it hidden well)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Levi becomes the Legion's Commander's unofficial bodyguard and - though not near as reluctant as he should be to take on the additional role - a worthy secret-keeper.

The rest of his week in the only Middle Sina district he has yet to explore, he finds enough information to track down Erwin by doing what he does best.

Listening.

He alternates between this and avoiding thoroughfares, seeking out as much correspondence as he possibly can.

Building his body up again by eating, sleeping longer, avoiding the promise of snowstorm weather at all costs.

Orienting himself in his new surroundings each time he travels to a new district.

Drafting mental maps of his surroundings, learning through observation, since there aren’t any New World Atlases on the Surface as there were once in the Old World.

Then again, as he’s learned through murmurs from restless citizens, the government seems to put a ban on books and industries and services of all kinds every other week.

There aren’t Atlases _or_ Almanacs here, in fact.

And to think Levi once thought the Family was the most constipated group of tight-asses around.

Even so – day and night, sleet or gray sunshine – Levi spends the next seven days of tireless information gathering.

Inconspicuous factory workers and visiting businessmen from Upper Sina are the easy ones, if not the easiest.

When approached, they’re eager to talk and the most willing to share in the circulating wealth of knowledge.

Or just as desperate, Levi discovers, to have their delicate egos stroked; they get a bit of his time and he gets information, both the contrived and invaluable variety.

The local rumor mongrels, a motley crew who don’t bother to cover their trails like Contacts in the Underground did, are another helpful bunch.

If he can locate them, these are folk who have ties to military families and, in effect, government connections that keep them in the know.

It’s just the way of the Surface world, to stake claim to the talk of the town first.

A matter of pride.

 

* * *

 

Which is why – while he follows Erwin through the military district, daytime to nightfall, like he has in the past – Levi doesn’t know why he starts to look forward to chasing off the shady and seedy characters that also shadow the unwitting older man, swearing some to silent secrecy and others to sprint away from the base while running in the other direction screaming about ‘ghosts’ and ‘wizardry’ when, to the mischievous once-Runner, those tricks and traps were all too fun to set.

But Levi does know how much fun it is to set them off in the hapless bastards’ faces.

Which is why – while he makes his way to the blond’s private quarters and tiptoes through the bedroom window left open – Levi doesn’t know why he feels that strange thirst for understanding, for acknowledgement, returning to him at the sight of Erwin sitting upright at his office desk poring through fragments of research notes and new formations into the early morning so he isn’t plagued by horrific night visions or the guilt that sends him pacing and reaching for a pleasure smoke.

But Levi does know why Erwin mumbles monologues to the cloud-covered moon.  

Of course.

Which is why – while he considers and reconsiders, wonders why he would leave the Underground to learn of the Surface like this, for this – Levi doesn’t know why he has the oddest sense that he made the right choice, after all, in letting Erwin live that day and watching Erwin over the course of these last few months and following him all the way here, where his wanderlust is far from sated but he’s seen such interesting sights and people on the journeys to and from the military base.

But Levi does know why he came to the Surface in the first place: he wanted his pocketknife back.

 

* * *

 

But Levi also knows he’s started to believe in other things.

Started to believe that his childhood wish to take flight and see the world from a different perspective could be a reality if he joins the Trainee Corps.

Started to believe joining the Trainee Corps could help reclaim the power lost by the Outer Districts and the Inner Districts and the Underground alike.

Started to believe that, if there’s anyone who can take down the beasts that kept Humanity in these Walls for so long and brought out the worst in mortalkind over this century of Titan and upper-crust rule long overdue for a change, they couldn’t be among the Scouting Legion’s best.

No way.

Not a _chance_.

Nothing’s ever so simple.

 

* * *

 

(But Erwin Smith and his infuriating curiosity and his call to war against both Titankind and Humankind are living proof of what Levi can no longer deny.

The nature of change, within and outside these Walls, is far from simple.

As are the slow tides of change turning about in Levi’s heart.)

 


	19. when we are older (you'll understand)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An interlude, in moderate undertones of reconsideration.

Dust mites.

Levi couldn’t believe his luck.

All this traveling, all this planning, all this sneaking around to find the one safe, empty area within this sorry excuse for a military stronghold.

The best place, he decides, to lie in wait for Erwin’s inevitable return.

But it’s an downright disaster zone.

Alright.

Maybe it wasn’t that bad.

By comparison to the last time he peered through the clerestory windows, it might even be an improvement.

He feels another sneeze – and then, several – coming on.

 

* * *

 

 

For as cluttered as Levi’s apartment is, Erwin’s office space was a spectacular mess.

Stacks upon stacks of unfiled budgeting sheets.

Aged scrolls tossed about here and there on shelves.

The grime gathering in tufts and spotting the weathered wood floors.

“Ugh _,_ ” Levi huffs, done folding and refolding his jacket in his displeasure. “Shit. I don’t have _time_ for this—”

He places it on the coatrack at a sudden thought, however.

“Well,” he grumbles aloud, “maybe. If the old man’s not back till late tonight and if it’s his day off like that Big Nose Giant with the moustache said to Four-Eyes…”

With this in mind, he heads back out of the office.

With cleaning supplies and a uniform from the same supply closet, he returns from the empty halls.

With these things in hand, he gets right to work.

(He’s got plenty of time to spare, after all – not to mention an office to clean.)

 

* * *

 

Only there were three things Levi hadn’t counted on.

First: the extent of his intended target’s disorganization.

Second: the amount of experimentation and guesswork required to create a proper cleaning solution from the available substances.

Third: someone returning to retire to his quarters early.

Or, rather, three someones.

 


	20. you were only waiting for this moment (to be free)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which several choices are made - not all of them entirely by Levi's volition - but none so important as the one made with no regrets.

“Wow,” the bespectacled officer all but leers as soon as she pushes open the door, “I didn’t know you were into younger men, Erwin.”

Rising from hands and knees in a hurry, Levi’s sponge hits the floor.

“Shit,” he mouths.

Turns just in time to the sound of footfalls trailing in from behind.

Hears a resolute sniff as he does from the Giant’s scrutinizing stare.

A stare fixed not on Four-Eyes and her shit-eating grin but _him_.

“The way you said that,” snorts Big Nose, “makes me wonder about your interests, too, Zoë.”

It’s at the point Levi’s glower turns on him that he decides enough is enough and he’s about to let it loose.

Except Four-Eyes beats him to it.

“I’m only interested in Titans, dear Mike.” At a single beat’s uncomfortable silence, Four-Eyes gleams. “And this shorty is definitely not—”

Oh, but was that his _bucket_ just now?

Or was it good luck, good reflexes, a mixture of both that kept her from getting a pail full of vinegar- and ammonia-infused soap water right to the face?

Or was it Big Nose, pulling her aside just in time, who doesn’t shield her but another who Levi recognizes at once?

 

* * *

 

“Levi.”

Erwin doesn’t address the officers around him – or their mystified looks from Levi to Erwin and back again – but the Commander’s gaze meets his as he continues, conversational.

“I’m sorry,” Erwin goes on, damn polite as Levi’s always known him to be, “to have kept you waiting.”

Not a shred of hesitation.

Instead, Erwin’s pleasantries are the exact opposite.

“You say that like you knew,” Levi shrugs, “I was coming.”  

“I assumed you’d pursue me.” His practiced smile, immediate, sets off that strange flickering curiosity inside Levi.  “Is there a reason, though, you came all this way to see me?”

Like he knows.

Like he’s known all along.

Levi settles on, “to thank you,” before he explains, “for not ratting me out.”

“So you wanted to thank me,” Erwin begins again, less inquiry and more confirmation, “for not informing the authorities.”

Almost, Levi thinks, and the crooked twitch to the end of his lips widens a fraction.

“And to get my knife back.” Levi can feel Four-Eyes eyeballing him as he walks around the puddles of cleaning solution on the floor, pausing at one end of Erwin’s desk whilst the cohesive unit of two follow after Erwin chasing _him_. “My favorite pocketknife, might I add.”

“I apologize for that.” Then, almost indulgent, Erwin says: “But since you trusted me with your life, I can’t imagine it’d be much more of a stretch to trust me with your favorite pocketknife.”

“My,” Levi says through gritted teeth, “pocketknife.”

“Yes. Your,” Erwin adds emphasis on the word, ever amicable, “pocketknife.”

Perhaps Levi’s known it all along.

“You piece of shit,” breathes Levi, cognizant. “That’s why you left it out on the dresser while you slept.”

The windows left unlocked.

“You were testing me, trying to bait me into showing up—”

The relative ease of sneaking through the base and the barracks.

“—and wring my neck while I was asleep,” Erwin supplies, to the background noises of Four-Eyes's alarmed sputters and Big Nose’s indignant snuffle from around the loveseat. “I was aware of that, yes. I wouldn’t call it baiting exactly, but you’ve got the right idea.”

The lack of surveillance, traveling and stationary, despite a slew of shady characters attempting to do their worst.

“And what if I did?”

Levi hops off the desk to come around the other side, wrenching him down none too gently before tugging the taller man down to eye level.

Awkward angle aside, Levi knew he could do it.

Height difference notwithstanding, the pocketknife in Erwin’s breast pocket stares back at him, a scant few centimeters from his taut-knuckled grip.

If he wanted to snatch it back, he could.

If he wanted to take what’s his, he could.

If he wanted to flee out the bay window left open to filter out the smell of ammonia, he **could**.

“You know I could do it.” If Levi wanted to, he could slit Erwin Smith’s throat. “Any time I wanted to. Any time you let your guard down.”

But Levi recalls the day they met, the relative ease by which the Commander overpowered him.

Recalls the day they sat at odds in Levi’s apartment, the day Erwin displayed an interest in his abilities.

“So my question to you: why? Why bait me?”

He feels nothing less than unsure.

But when he slinks closer still, he can hardly see Big Nose’s visible rising heckles.

But when he yanks Erwin down by his bolo tie, he can hardly hear Four Eyes’s stifled shout, not while he’s like this.

Focused.

Confident.

From this distance, stealing back the pocketknife would be an effortless feat.

“Why give me the blatant temptation,” asks Levi, not daring to draw his eyes away from the Commander, not from this distance, “Erwin?”

So effortless, Levi finds, that he doesn’t expect the hand that reaches out—

—and drops down on the crown of Levi’s hair.

“I figured if you wanted to kill me, you’d have already done it by now.” The hold on his collar loosens, a punctuated sound not unlike a gasp in the back of the boy’s throat muted. “Levi.”

Levi looks down at where the tattered cleaning uniform sleeve tapers off.

Where his fist once-clenched unfurls and grapples at the open air.

Where his worn boots, having taken him so far, remain rooted to the space between his bowed form and where Erwin stands.

But, as it turns out, Levi learns after he’s done wearing down the flesh of his lower lip to a dull ache, Erwin isn’t looking down at him.

He looks at Levi, in fact, the same way Levi regarded him earlier.

“I just remembered I have to meet the Court Marshall at the Inner District.” Erwin breaks the taut celebratory silence, the light ruffle of the boy’s dark hair near affectionate as he leaves a stunned Levi to head for the door. “But we’ll finish cleaning up the place together and, when I get back, we can talk about enlistment—”

“I’m not,” Levi fumes, “joining the Legion.”

“Not even if it means,” Erwin retorts, “ending the reign of the Underground Crow for good and living for no one’s sake but your own?”

Unlike Levi who, at the moment, isn’t any of these things.

Five seconds.

(But as Big Nose brushes past him, not yet to the point of relaxing around Levi, and Four-Eyes offers him a brief wave and an easy grin, Levi senses no reproach from either of them.)

Five steps.

(But as he hesitates, as his stare falls on the sunset gathered on the windowsill, Levi gazes at the picturesque scenery stretching far past the horizon, far past the fenced perimeter of the base.)

Five taut inhales.

(But as the exhales that follow, along with the five millimeters left until Erwin and his company leave him behind, relinquish themselves to resolution, Levi is all at once aware of what he needs to do.

Confident.)

“—Fine.”

When they turn around, a collective unit of three pushing through the door, Levi lets the inevitable happen.

He laughs and, unremarkable as the vague noise is, the amused crook of his faint smile says it all.

“But if I’m making this place fucking spotless by the time you get back, you’d better help me move out of that apartment.” Superior officer or not, Levi suspected Erwin had no real qualms about his informality – just as Levi had no room for doubt about his choice. “Got tons of shit I want to move into here for storage ‘till I go from trainee to scout and get my own quarters.”

The older man’s light chorus of laughter returns the boy’s conditions.

His mock-salute accompanies an approving nod.

And, to the echo of Erwin’s obliging murmur of _yes sir_ to the wan sparks set off at Erwin’s departing smile before the door clicks shut, their fates, inevitably, intertwine.

 

* * *

 

The revelation only comes to Levi after he’s picked up his mop and resumed cleaning.

He’s never been sure about this decision, never been sure this was the best path to take.

But as Levi would learn – in the span of five years from that day – choosing to follow Erwin Smith was the one and only choice he would never once regret.

 

 


End file.
